ON Sundays, 102-year-old Agatha Payton can be seen in her St Thomas home intently reading the weekly Sunday Observer feature ‘100 not out’.

Not only is her eyesight remarkable, but so is her hearing, her faculties and her motor skills.

Payton’s great-grandson, Mowayne Williams, a teacher at the Port Morant Primary and Junior High, revealed that she still does everything well.

“She is still doing everything, and I’m not exaggerating,” he told the Sunday Observer recently. “She behaves the same now as when I knew her at 90. Nothing has changed, She is very, very strong,” he said.

Williams also described his great-grandmother as a storyteller and a person who feels the pain of others.

“She is a storyteller. And if you head hurting don’t tell her because she will fret. She feels everybody’s pain,” Williams said.

As if to confirm her ability to move, Payton got up and began dancing up a storm for the camera, moving her hips and arms freely.

“I give God thanks that I live to see this age because my mother died when she was 65,” a smiling Payton, known to her family as ‘Mum’, said. “I am very glad. Everybody ask the question why I think I live so long. I say that it is God’s plan, because mi telling you seh mi work hard you know man! I work hard man. I used to do domestic work. You know when you have to go down on the floor with coconut brush and wax? We used to get red stick and boil it and take it and wipe the floor. Is afterwards the dye them come in. And they used to have some big American stove that you have to cut up the wood and put in it and then you light it. It was a big broad something that could hold all three/four big pots,” she explained. “And I used to sell down the wharf too. I used to sell fry dumpling, pudding, fry fish and cook food — rice and peas — and all different types of things,” she added.

Payton recalled working in a seven-apartment house, cleaning floors, washing, ironing clothes and cooking. This was only one of her places of work.

“One house that I work was a seven-apartment and mi had to go down pon dem two knees yah you know man”, she said, pulling up her flared skirt to reveal her knees. “And mi have to scrub and scrub. Mi work hard man. I would leave my home at six from Sunday to Sunday to work then come back home. Sometimes I stay over or stay a night or so before my mother died.”

She worked up to the age of 67 and said she stopped working because she was tired.

Payton also recalled working at a police station where she had her left index finger broken after she refused to sleep with one of the police officers as a young girl.

“I used to work at a police station and I would leave my house 6:00 am and you have a big, old rusty-back policeman who say I am coming to work too late. [He] said I should come 4:00 am and come lay down inna bed with him before mi start work,” Payton said. “And when him see that I was not doing it, one morning I was cleaning and him have on a big, old tuff boot and mi bend down cleaning and the man step on my finger — see it yah?” she said displaying a finger awkwardly bent to one side. “I came out the station and took up two rock stone and tell him to come outside, and the corporal came and asked what happened and I told him. Before the end of the week he was dismissed from the station,” she said.

Payton was born in the same district in which she still lives, Old Pera, St Thomas.

“My mother told me I was born 1910, the 10th day of July at 10 o’clock Monday morning,” the centenarian said with a rich laugh as she reached for her birth certificate.

But while she admitted to enjoying her present life, her past has not been without its share of woes.

“I had four boys who died when they were babies; some didn’t even nurse,” she said. “They just sick and died.”

After losing her four boys, Payton gave birth to a daughter. This was her only other child.

However, her daughter died at the age of 55 in 2000 when Payton was 90.

“It took me days, it took me months to eat,” she recalled. “When night come mi just sit down up in the bed so … can’t sleep. She was living with me up to the time that she died. Her head was in my lap and her two feet in her son lap when she died.”

While this could easily be considered the worst pain that a mother could ever feel, not so for Payton.

“The greatest pain I ever felt was when I was working at wharf in Port Antonio and I got news that my daughter was pregnant when she was 18,” she said.

The situation was even more devastating for her, she said, because she had just decided to get baptised and this was not what she had expected from her only living child.

“And when mi ask her and she tell me — the ‘drum pon’ couldn’t hold the water,” she said. And we (herself and 12 other new converts) pray and we pray. And mi survive. That was my biggest pain. I didn’t expect anything like that.”

To make matters worse, her mother had died not long before, which meant that she had no one to care for her pregnant teen.

“I had no family. The only person I had left was my daughter,” Payton said. “I didn’t have any mother to send her to and mi never have nuh body.”

Today, she said, she has a lot of family, including three grandchildren and six great-grands.

“I have a lot of family, I can’t count them. They almost reach mi age,” she laughed. “If you walk in the district is only a few who are not my family.”

In commenting on the spate of criminal activities and the Jamaican economy, Payton said that Jamaica was once a good place but it is now in a state of hopelessness.

“Those were good days man. You could go shop and buy ‘quatty’ salt fish. When you go sea side to buy fish they just scrape up a whole heap of fish and put it in your container for one little bit of money. Now if you don’t have $250 and $300 you can’t get a pound. You go shop and the things dem dear,” she said.

“They never have killing at all. You could walk from here and go anywhere and now you can’t do it. Man come kill you. When we turn on the TV at nights and when you look at the nice girls them that missing,” she said, shaking her head. “Jamaica mash up. Jamaica mash up. Mi remember when mi used to pay ‘two and six’ for taxes, ’till it go to five shilling. And then mi used to pay $600 ’til they raise it to $1,000. And this month now is $2,200. Mi hear people a bawl all over the place. Mi don’t have no hopes that it will come back to.”

A contributing factor, she said, is the constant fuss between both parties.

“Every day you hear them a fuss ’bout money this and money that,” she said. “Far too much ‘susu’. Mi seh to myself seh if I was the prime minister, mi give it up. The other party seh she not running the country good and all kind of something. Mi would give it up,” she added.

Payton, who never married, admitted to raising a number of children — more than she could count.

“Mi raise nuff children man, nuff, nuff, nuff. Mi raise children so ’till some go foreign and dead over there.”

Included in the lot was a two-month-old, whom she took in after the child’s mother died.

“Mi live good with people, man. If any little children come here now and I have bread, biscuit, anything, I will give them,” she said.

Paulette Dawkins, Payton’s granddaughter who cares for her, said that any child who the centenarian sees passing her home and misbehaving, she would call them over and correct them.

“Yes, if she see any children rude she call and correct them,” Dawkins said. “But she all right. Sometimes she worry a lot, because we have water problem, and if one of her bottles running out she fussy because she want it full. She fussy about what to eat because it’s like she don’t really want to eat anything,” Dawkins stated.

“When you reach my age you will understand,” Payton chipped in. “Mi body get old and my stomach no want many things no more.”

Payton recalled visiting Moore Town in Portland while she was working in Port Maria and drinking honey and eating Busso and wild hog meat, among different things that she believed helped in the strengthening of her body. These she said she got from the Maroons, and can no longer find.

She also enjoyed going to dances.

“Them time you pay shilling to go into a dance. And we go and dance and wine up and come home,” she said while demonstrating some of the moves she was accustomed to doing.

Her only ailments now are arthritis and hypertension.

Michael Headley described his aunt as a person who does not give any trouble.

“She loves to talk about the past. I have learnt a lot from her,” he said. “I think she will live for at least another 10 years!”